The Department of Musicology provides a rich environment for graduate study in historical musicology and ethnomusicology. It also oversees three BM curricula (music history, ethnomusicology, and early music) and provides musicology courses for the BA in music offered by the College of Literature, Science and the Arts. Michigan’s internationally renowned faculty encourage students to design robust yet flexible plans of study while cultivating individual interests and opening new fields of investigation. The wealth of intellectual and institutional resources include many vibrant interdisciplinary centers on campus and excellent performing ensembles that offer invaluable opportunities to perform and listen to the repertories and musical traditions that are central to their scholarly work.
The musicology faculty at Michigan is diverse in its research practices and intellectual orientations, and embraces many methods of inquiry-from source studies, archival research, musical historiography, cultural history, and ethnography, to critical theoretical studies in music and gender, sexuality, and race. The faculty take advantage of the University of Michigan’s strong programs in the humanities and social sciences to engage in cross-disciplinary collaborations that open the door for our students to broaden and deepen their study of music through interaction with scholars in other fields.
The musicology department trains its students to become tomorrow’s leading scholars and teachers in their fields of specialization, contributing to the global understanding of culture, history, and society. The faculty and the institutional and creative resources available at U-M have launched the successful careers of generations of graduates in academic departments across the country. Financial support and teaching fellowships are available to graduate students for a total of 10 academic terms from SMTD, the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies, and other sources.
Musicology students work in a variety of facilities, including the Earl V. Moore Building, which recently received a $29.5 million expansion and renovation. Students have access to cutting-edge audio and video recording studios and receive unprecedented entrepreneurial and career planning support through the school’s EXCEL program (Excellence in Entrepreneurship Career Empowerment & Leadership), poised to become the nation’s top program for funding student entrepreneurial ventures in the performing arts.
The University of Michigan is renowned for developing excellence. Combining the focus and rigor of a conservatory with the academic breadth and depth of a major public research university, an SMTD education is a transformative experience. Students receive a comprehensive program of instruction, performance, and pedagogy, along with academic opportunities made possible through the University’s vast spectrum of top-rated programs. The School fosters innovation, values diversity and inclusion, and graduates fully-engaged citizens who are eager to make a difference in their field and community.
Department History
Established in 1948, as part of the University of Michigan’s Rackham School of Graduate Studies, the musicology program developed through the 1950s under the leadership of Louise E. Cuyler and Raymond Kendall, with a faculty that included Hans T. David, H. Wiley Hitchcock, and Gordon Sutherland. In 1954, the university acquired the library of Belgian musicologist and collector Jean-August Stellfeld, whose 20,000 volumes, including rare prints, did much to provide a basis for the scholarly study of European music from the 16th century on.
During the 1960s, Glenn Watkins, Albert Cohen, and William P. Malm joined the musicology faculty, the latter introducing the study of ethnomusicology to the graduate program. In 1974, the musicology department merged with the School of Music, Theatre & Dance’s department of music history, which in earlier years had served only undergraduate and master’s students. That merger brought Richard Crawford, Judith Becker, David E. Crawford, R. John Wiley, Gwynn McPeek, and William J. Weichlein, among others, into an expanded department with students at all points on the academic spectrum. In the 1980s, James M. Borders and Louise K. Stein joined the department. During the 1990s, Joseph S. C. Lam, Lester P. Monts, and Steven M. Whiting were added, while more recently, the faculty ranks have been complemented by the addition of Christi-Anne Castro, Mark Clague, Gabriela Cruz, Jane Fulcher, Charles Garrett, Meilu Ho, and Stefano Mengozzi.
Since the 1970s, the musicology program, as part of a major public university with a powerful music-making tradition (including a vigorous composition department), has graduated students with specialties in European music of several eras, American music of many stripes, and performance traditions from various parts of the world.
